The present invention relates generally to telecommunication systems and, more particularly, to a method and system for negotiated call forwarding.
Call forwarding allows calls that would otherwise be directed to a first destination to be redirected automatically to a second destination. For example, suppose that a businessman is scheduled to be in a conference all morning but is expecting an important telephone call. Call forwarding may be activated so that all calls that would, otherwise, be directed to the office telephone of the businessman are forwarded automatically to the telephone in the conference room. The redirecting of the phone calls is performed automatically by a local switching device that is configured to perform the call forwarding. When the business meeting is over, the businessman may deactivate the call forwarding so that calls reach the businessman at his office telephone.
When a party wishes to activate call forwarding, it is presumed that the party has gained permission to forward calls to the new destination. Unfortunately, the party may have not obtained such permission. Additionally, improper or abusive forwarding of calls for multi-media sessions can be very costly for the calling or called party because multi-media calls consume a large amount of bandwidth, which is very expensive. Moreover, this conventional approach to call forwarding is ripe for abuse in that a malicious party may intentionally forward calls to a destination for which approval has not been obtained.